


The First Night

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Secret Samol 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: In that spirit, I will end with a tale that I hold close to my own heart, one of simple and small joys. It was told to me by a traveler I met by chance in a snowstorm, a broad and boisterous man who laughed often, and seemed to grow in its telling. There are enough stories of Samot and Samothes’ first meeting to fill a thousand thousand books; this one, however, is the truth I choose to take above all others.
Relationships: Samot/Samothes (Friends at the Table)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	The First Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Secret Samol 2020 for Elleaienen!

_An excerpt from_ Hieron and its Histories _by an unknown author, item #43 in the Last University Library collection, donated generously by Lord Ephrim. To take out for reference, contact Special Collections Administrator Alonzo Victor Devaraux van der Dawes._

The tales collected in this book mirror the lives of the gods they describe: they are out of order and recursive, crossing back on one another, relaying each side of every story as if it is the unvarnished truth. And, of course, all of them are.

This last reflects the heart of Hieron’s gods, so often lost in our understanding of them. We know so little, looking back past the Erasure, and what we remember is not often joyful. We recount stories of valiant fights, foes vanquished, petty squabbles writ large enough to become wars. But in my research while laboring over this collection, I have learned that there is more to them than history. They raze Heiron and they raise it according to their whims, but their whims are still, on occasion, human. And to be human is to live stories that are nearly too small for pages such as these, too commonplace to be put down in precious ink and paper. Even Samothes himself could not fill his every moment with miracles. 

In that spirit, I will end with a tale that I hold close to my own heart, one of simple and small joys. It was told to me by a traveler I met by chance in a snowstorm, a broad and boisterous man who laughed often, and seemed to grow in its telling. There are enough stories of Samot and Samothes’ first meeting to fill a thousand thousand books; this one, however, is the truth I choose to take above all others.

_The First Night_

On the first night bright and guarded Samothes met his husband, he traveled through the forest that was the domain of his father. Near the end of his journey, he stopped in a shadowy copse, unsettled by nothing he could name. Samothes, King-God of Marielda, had left his hearth and his labors only under duress from Samol, the Earth itself. 

Father and son had argued recently on the subject of Samol’s birthday, a hallowed event long lost to current memory. Some think the holiday eventually merged with High Sun Day, which we still honor today, while other scholars believe it was simply discarded over time, perhaps in deference to Samol’s own wishes. Regardless, in those days it was a day of rest, when all labor was abandoned in favor of family and food and music.

Samothes at this time was at the height of his power, and was needed more than ever to serve The City of First Light. The sound of his hammer could be heard ringing out at all hours. Samol had implored his son to set it aside, even if only for a single evening. Samothes had not wished to abandon his work, and tried many tactics as he argued. In his petulance, he even pointed out that it was the dead of winter, a time when Samol’s birthday had never been celebrated before. His father disagreed. Who would know the day of his birth better than himself? So what if his own calendar did not match that of the rest of the world?

Samothes had lost the argument, as they both knew he must, and so that night he’d left behind his hammer in his cooling forge, swept a cloak around his neck, and ventured into the woods.

The wind was bitterly cold, and even Samothes, with warmth at the core of his very being, shivered as snowflakes danced above him. The clearing where he paused was close to his father’s house in the center of the forest. Laughter crept in at the edges of his hearing, Samol’s home beckoning to him. Still, he waited. He knew he was not alone.

When he turned, he found himself watched by a wolf with piercing gold eyes. Samothes knew wolves, and did not fear them; but this wolf did not have any of the bearing of Severea. 

Samothes and the wolf regarded one another, not as predator sizes up prey, but as any traveller in a dark wood observes a stranger. The wolf, the more decisive actor, bounded past Samothes and jumped to dig its claws into a nearby tree. In the air, the wolf became a young man of startling beauty, who pulled himself up onto an overhanging branch, settling across it with a careless air. He peered down at Samothes once again, his eyes just as bright as the wolf’s. His yellow hair tumbled across his shoulders in endless waves. 

“You’re late,” said the young man in an imperious tone. 

“So are you,” replied Samothes, matching him. 

“I was here on time. I just haven’t decided if I’ll be attending.”

Samothes had heard of the shadow that had robbed his aunt Severea of her name and her life. When he imagined that shadow, his mind had conjured a darkness so black it swallowed everything else around it. This young man was nothing like that; and yet, he did feel drawn in by the wolf, although there was nothing sinister about it. The young man only sat lazily atop a tree, swinging his feet. He burned in his own way as brilliantly as the sun that was so distant in this part of the year. 

“Did my father invite you?”

“Do you think I would come to this place uninvited?”

They regarded each other now as companions on a journey do, choosing which path to follow. 

“If my father invited you, you should come with me,” Samothes told the young man who he knew must be called Samot. “He’ll never let you hear the end of it otherwise.”

“Is that so?” This was not asked mockingly. There was a tilt to the way Samot asked questions, in his bearing and his words. Even now, Samothes was able to recognize it. When Samot asked a question, he meant it with everything he had. 

Samothes agreed that it was, and he asked for the young man to come down from the tree, so that they could speak more easily.

The young man’s teeth were as bright as his eyes when he grinned and leapt down from his perch. He landed lightly, and regarded Samothes with an equally piercing gaze up close. “I don’t know that your family will be pleased to see me.”

Samothes couldn’t disagree. Still, he knew his father well; it would be an unfit gift for Samothes to leave the boy he had decided to take as his own out in the cold. 

Titling his head, Samot took on a wolfish expression as he pondered his dilemma. Unwolfishly, he shivered in the next sudden gust of wind. Samothes, before he realized he had done it, pulled off his cloak and swept it around Samot’s shoulders. 

Samot touched the collar of it. “You think I’ll be allowed to stay?” he asked, that same curious edge to the question.

“Yes,” said Samothes firmly. “If Samol says you are family, then you are.” At the time, he wasn’t truly sure what had decided him. To see an anxious wolf lingering at the edges of laughter, not sure if he was allowed in to share it, had affected him more than he would have expected.

Samot allowed that he would join Samothes at his father’s hearth, for a simple price: if he was turned out at any point during the meal, he would keep Samothes’ cloak with him as payment. Samothes, surprised at his own laughter, agreed.

They left the forest, and stepped together into Samol’s home. It was not unlike entering the forge at the height of Samothes’ work. They were surrounded in an instant by sound and warmth: Samol bent over with laughter beside his kin Severea and Galenica, the heat of the stove as a pot bubbled merrily atop it. Samot shifted from foot to foot as they all turned to look at him and Samothes. His careless poise from the forest had vanished. He appeared suddenly very young, and did not remember to take off the cloak he had bargained for until Samothes removed it for him.

For a moment there was silence, only the crackle of the fire breaking it. Then Samol laughed again, this time in disbelief. “You came after all, boy!” 

It was a whirlwind of activity at once. Samol greeted the boy he now treated as his son, and he pressed both Samot and Samothes into helping him prepare the meal. Samot frowned in consternation at every task he was given; he had lived first as a shadow, second as a wolf, and only as an afterthought as a young man. He did not know how to cut butter into flour, or how to watch over soup at a simmer, or how to tell when a roast tucked away in the oven was done—in his mind, it was a waste to cook it at all. 

Samothes was, as we all know well, no great teacher. And yet, again propelled by nothing he could name, he showed Samot how to do all of these things, guiding him with his own hands. Samot accepted the help warily, and then, after a time, smilingly. Even then, he loved nothing so much as learning anything new.

Despite the chill of the wind outside, the evening was a warm one. Samot and Severea circled each other, wary at first, but the mood of the holiday and Samol’s determination that they would treat each other as kin were too much for either of them. Or perhaps the deciding factor was the moment Severea lost herself to laughter at Samot’s expression when he realized the meat at their meal would be fully cooked; in her laughter she found something else in Samot than the wolf that had stolen her skin. For that evening at least they were fast friends, discussing the fauna of the forest around them with interest while Samothes and Galencia shook their heads, and found other topics.

When it was decided that Samot could best help the cooking by keeping his hands well out of it, he perched instead on the counter while Samothes tended to the soup, still something lupine in his manner as he leaned back on his hands. Samot was startled for much of that night in Samol’s home, by the kindness he found there, even at the hands of those he had hurt in the past. Samothes was startled in turn, by Samot’s easy charm and keen interest in all that surrounded him. 

Soon enough they all sat down to eat together, knocking knees under Samol’s table hardly big enough for five. Samothes came to realize that he had missed these things in his long hours in the forge, and missed them without noticing: Severea’s sharp tongue, Galenica’s steady presence, Samol’s crackling laughter. Even Samot’s sharp and curious gaze, though he had never felt it on his skin before tonight. Perhaps, Samothes reasoned, there was warmth to be found beyond the confines of a forge—it was the first lesson Samot taught him, and its knowledge lingered.

The last detail of this story was imparted to me over ale with great seriousness: Samot never did return the cloak that Samothes draped around him on that first night. It kept him warm far longer than any fire could.


End file.
